Lisa Canning gives guidelines for busy moms

I didn’t want to go. My house was a mess, my laundry piled high and my children unruly when it was time to leave. I wanted a bath and a book and an early bedtime, and I got into my mini-van thinking that the last thing I wanted to hear was someone telling me how I could have it all. 

But as I sat in the room at St. Michael Catholic Community with fifty other women it dawned on me that I may not have felt like attending, but maybe what Lisa Canning had to say was the truth I needed to hear.

Canning, the author of the new book The Possibility Mom: How to be a Great Mom and Pursue Your Dreams at the Same Time, is expecting her eighth child with husband Josh. In her native-Toronto, she has enjoyed a successful career in interior design and has been featured on numerous design-themed shows and channels. Working as a speaker, podcaster and YouTuber, she seeks to inspire her followers to live their best life. 

Canning spoke in the relatable way a good friend would as she led a workshop-style presentation, “She’s the girl-next-door, but she’s got it together,” said attendee Leslie Poirier. 

On being invited to share, Piorier told her “Lisa, you are electric,” and many nodded in agreement. 

Looking around, I could see the heads nodding as Canning shared what her first five hectic years as a mom were like, having four children and working as an interior designer at the same time. 

“Many times I questioned my existence, exhausted by mom-guilt and desperate for a solution to an overstretched life,” she writes in her book. 

Talking to us that evening she called herself a “petri-dish,” saying that after what she called her, “mini-van meltdown,” she just started experimenting with ways to make it all possible, and above all, trusting God. 

“God just wanted me to trust Him,” she said, citing many times through the years that He had blessed her family. 

After being asked many times, “how do you do it?” she has come up with a guideline for all moms to use to go from constantly feeling overwhelmed to peace.

Step one of her plan to open our lives to change is to “Identify the limiting beliefs holding you back from your best life.”
“You can tell what your limiting beliefs are by paying attention to the times you say ‘I just can’t do that because…’” she said, then invited us to share a few of our own with someone next to us. The room buzzing with enthusiasm, Piorier and the mom next to her struck up what might be a life-changing conversation for them both.

“I’m Leslie and this is Ann,” Poirier said, introducing new friend Ann Hoff, “and we were just sharing that we’ve come to a point where there’s a step to be taken, but our limiting belief is basically that we’re just chicken.”

As heads nodded, and voices murmured agreements with Poirier and Hoff, other women also shared that they too struggled with things like consistency and multitasking. All of this culminated to the point that Canning was trying to make: that life is difficult for all of us, but we sometimes tell a story to ourselves that makes it seem impossible to do the things we want.

For the rest of our evening, Canning spent her time showing us that there are, as her book aptly puts it, possibilities for everyone.  

Chatting afterward, Poirier and Hoff shared that though they just met that very evening, they planned to meet for coffee closer to the new year to hold each other accountable and to talk goals and dreams and how they’re coming along.
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Hoff is a mom and massage therapist with kids between the ages of 12 and 25. She said that though her kids are older, they still need her, “not less, but in a different way.”

Poirier, a decorated ICU trauma nurse currently stays home with her daughters, a nine-month and a 4-year-old. The two exuded joy as they spoke of what they’d been hearing from Canning. “I like the idea of making a list and realizing that what we’re doing right now is not working so then you have to make a change,” said Poirier, outlining one of Canning’s pointers for living.

Lisa Canning (left) at St. Michael's Catholic Community.

“Fast forward to your funeral,” Canning said midway through the evening, leading us to ask ourselves what kind of legacy we wanted to leave behind and to take a moment to think what our own obituary might say. She had stumbled across this exercise in another book, and when she’d written her own obituary years before, she told us that she had realized that “none of these things are true right now” then took steps to make a change.

​Hoff and Poirier told me they wanted to make some changes for themselves.  “Because we said we were chickens,” Hoff said of the exercise, “I want to be remembered not as that, but as someone who went out on a limb and did things.” She nodded when I suggested she wanted to be described as as brave and courageous. 

“Deep down we have all these goals and dreams that we want to accomplish and we may even feel silly saying them out loud,” chimed in Poirier, “There is something that I want to accomplish and even tonight just by talking to Ann I realize that you aren’t going to accomplish it if you’re chicken and just stay in your comfort zone.

“We were saying to each other” Hoff said, “You’ve got to make a decision, pray about it, but then you have to do something.” 

Hoff and Poirier’s experience that evening is just a sampling of the wise words spoken by many women as we enjoyed time to mull over Canning’s message. As I drove home that night, staying late to have meaningful conversations and meet Canning herself, what struck me as the overarching message to us as mothers was that well-known verse from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” Perhaps sometimes we need a modern messenger to tell us the same thing.

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Written by Jessica Cyr for Faithfully